Some reviewed 'The Master' on their knees, and while I respected its distinctive discordancy - can a movie be at once feverish and glacial? - I was unmoved.

The movie is a metaphor for the power of delusional hype--a metaphor for itself.

I'm more encouraged by the saplings: new music groups, tiny new venues, entrepreneurial musician-composers who aren't waiting to be discovered but are instead building their own Establishment.

A critic often has to play the role of coroner, dissecting a work to find out why it died (or never lived).

Let me tell you, if your marriage is in trouble, skip the therapist and find a psycho. Nothing brings people together faster.

The English have a wellspring of comedy that will never be exhausted: the combination of bestial urges and excellent manners.

Despite some standout events, 2012 was demoralizing. The Met felt adrift, and New York City Opera couldn't claw its way back to artistic health.

Russell Crowe is normally an actor who disappears so far into his characters you'd swear his DNA has been altered.

It's easy to say "This year in art sucked." After all, about 85 percent of all shows of contemporary art are bad. But 85 percent of all art made in the Renaissance was bad.

The movie's only serious criticism is reserved for Baker's television network, which doesn't think Americans care about Afghanistan - kind of hypocritical given this film's lack of substance.

I have a female colleague who gets annoyed that Tina Fey seems to go out of her way in her movies to deride her looks, as if she weren't such an attractive woman.

Smile at people, pop your head into your boss’s office regularly and say hello, and come to your first meeting with something really smart to say.

I discovered that the most dangerous mask is the one worn by intelligent people because they are clever at their disguise.

Ideas in the head set hands about their several tasks.

The place of exciting innovation - where the action is - that's Rhode Island!

If it doesn't add value, it's waste.

There's nothing deader than a dead love.

They all do the same things. They may think their sins are original, but for the most part they are petty and repetitive.

O Lord Most-wise, strengthen us by Your power that we not fear the non-believing world neither when they lash us with whips nor when they insult us with words for Your sake.

There is nothing like a naturalistic orientation to dispel all these morbid thoughts of "sin" and "free will" and "moral responsibility.

Sometimes you lose sight of what's going on around you.